Committee backs plan to cut number of MEPs

The European Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee has agreed on a plan for how to reduce the number of MEPs after the next election.

The Lisbon treaty sets a maximum size for the Parliament of 751 MEPs after the 2014 election, with no country allowed more than 96 MEPs. The current size of the Parliament is 754 MEPs and Croatia is joining the European Union in July, adding 12 MEPs.

The question before the constitutional affairs committee was how to distribute the required reduction in seats. After Germany’s delegation has been reduced in size from the current 99 to the maximum of 96, a further 12 seats must be given up.

The committee has voted to approve a plan that would see 12 countries each lose one seat. In order of size of delegation they are: Romania, Greece, Belgium, Portugal, Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, Ireland, Croatia, Lithuania and Latvia.

The closest vote – ten votes to nine – was that Austria rather than Sweden should be one of those to have its delegation reduced. Austria currently has 19 seats while Sweden has 20.

The MEPs who drafted a report for the committee, Roberto Gualtieri, from the Italian centre-left, and Rafał Trzaskowski, from the Polish centre-right, said that their proposed solution was “the one most likely to win a majority within Parliament and unanimity in the Council”.

Their guiding principle, they said, had been that no state should gain seats and no state (apart from Germany) should lose more than one.

The committee also said that it would propose a permanent formula for allocating seats after the 2019 election to take into account demographic trends and EU enlargement.

The proposal on the composition of the Parliament requires the unanimous backing of the European Council.